Book reviews

I’m taking part in #TheBloggerBefore blog tour today to celebrate the publication of psychological thriller The Girl Before which came out on Thursday. #TheBloggerBefore me was Raven whose review you can read on her gorgeous blog everywhereandnowhere. Enter the world of One Folgate Street and discover perfection . . . but can you pay the price? Jane stumbles on the rental opportunity of…

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What often marks us out as different in the eyes of others can result in our being subjected to the worst forms of cruelty and abuse. Mischling depicts this to devastating effect but Affinity Konar doesn’t allow that to overwhelm her novel, instead showing us the resilience and resources drawn on by its victims, and focussing on the survivors. It’s…

Mark Hardie’s debut crime novel Burned and Broken marks the promising start to a new contemporary crime series covering issues with a good dose of realism in its seaside setting of Southend. The charred body of an enigmatic policeman – currently the subject of an internal investigation – is found in the burnt-out shell of his car on the Southend sea…

Iceland is on my must-see list of places to visit and as every reader knows, when you can’t afford to physically go somewhere, the next best way to travel is by book. Which is why I jumped at the chance to read my first Dark Iceland novel. Rupture is actually the fourth book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series but you’ll be able to…

You’re going to want to clear some reading time before you open the covers of Steph Broadribb’s Deep Down Dead because once you crack it – and the whole can of worms inside – open, you are not going to want to put it down until you know that bounty hunter Lori Anderson has her man. And a hot bath, a…

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Ali Land’s debut novel Good Me, Bad Me has as its narrator a distinctive female voice, one that grabbed this reader from the very beginning as she tells her story of escape and survival. This is a perspective which is fast becoming a trend going by my recent reads: victim lit or, perhaps more appropriately, survivor lit. I have a feeling…

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Sirens is a new voice in urban noir and a book that’s set in Manchester rather than London, for a welcome change. I suspect even if you know Manchester well, and I don’t at all, it won’t be the Manchester that features in this debut novel from Joseph Knox. At least, I hope it isn’t. For while there are bars and a penthouse apartment…

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A small farming town in south-eastern Australia suffering from one of its worst recorded droughts, its townspeople desperate to survive and still feeding off speculation and suspicion; what looks like a double murder-suicide stirring up memories of another tragic event some twenty years previously; and a returning police detective, former best friend to the dead man, all combine to make up Jane…

If you’ve always enjoyed the darker side of fairytales, be they Grimm’s original tales or Angela Carter’s delicious interpretations, Claire Fuller’s more modern take on one might be the book for you. Our Endless Numbered Days opens in the stifling summer of the 1976 heatwave, in London, but very soon veers off into the cool dark forest of our nightmares….

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The publication date for Judith Kinghorn’s fourth novel, The Echo of Twilight, is fast approaching early next month but, given the season, now seems the perfect time to offer someone a copy of her previous novel, The Snow Globe. Give The Snow Globe a gentle shake and you’ll find a father falling off his pedestal, a mother forced to reassess her life, both…